Keith’s Blog

Christmas isn't what it used to be!

My unease with Christmas as it is now began very early in my life. Back in 1969, when I was three and a half, my mother left home and when December came, it was far from a happy occasion. After all, what is Christmas without a mother?

Then, when I was six, I had waited five months for the joy of receiving and then flying my new stunt kite at Christmas. I was big into aeroplanes and anything else that could fly (thus my later try out at being a pilot in the air force.) On Christmas morning, I couldn’t wait to run down our hallway and into the lounge to see if it had come. Only as I shoved open the door into the lounge did I realise that during the night my kite had fallen down from behind the tree and had lodged itself behind the tree on one side of the door and behind the heavy seat on the other side of the door. As I flung open the door with glee, I broke the wooden spines of my new stunt kite in half, destroying it. It would never be repaired. I sobbed most of the day. After all, what is Christmas without the present?

Then when I was fifteen, Christmas found me sitting at my father’s bed side in hospital waiting with him for death from pancreatic cancer. I remember looking out the hospital room window at all the Christmas lights beyond and at the people heading home from the bus stop laden with presents and treats. It meant nothing to me. After all, what is Christmas for those who are terminally ill and for those who are about to become orphans?

Christmas as it is today is for those who have families, those with presents, those for whom life is going well and filled with happiness. For the rest of us, Christmas is little more than a cruel reminder of what we haven’t got and the commercial stick with which we beat ourselves into even more pretence and debt. No wonder the busiest time of year for organisations such as the Samaritans is this very one.

BUT as I read the Bible, it becomes so clear to me that Christmas is not what it used to be. As the story of that first Christmas unfolds through those ancient gospel accounts, we see that the joy of Christmas as it used to be came to very different people:

As the prophet Isaiah foresaw the coming of that first Christmas he wrote: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2) When we grasp the context in which Christmas first appeared, we see that he was absolutely right. It was to those who were oppressed, whose lives were filled with despair, those who felt as if God had abandoned them and turned his back on them that this first nativity scene brought hope and rejoicing. In the unedited Christmas tale, Jesus was born into poverty, his birth was darkened by the slaughter of innocents, his family path was to flee as refugees. Christmas as it used to be was hardly a jingle bells story!

And yet in the midst of this all the angels sang “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all on whom his favour rests.” and elderly Simeon, in Jerusalem, who had longed to see God’s Messiah come felt able to say ‘I can die now– a happy man’” In the midst of all this, not only the religious, but irreligious Shepherds—outcasts and roughians in their society -rejoiced in this birth that now had come.
It was not even only the Jews but also Eastern Philosophers who travelled miles to catch a glimpse who fell down in wonder at the sight they beheld.

What was it about that event, Christmas as it used to be that could cause such joy in the most unlikely of circumstances? Simply this, the message announced on that first Christmas morn was that of Immanuel—God is with us. God had come among them. Now, despite their circumstances and pain, now despite their poverty and oppression, now despite it all, they knew they were not alone; they knew they had not been abandoned by the God of the universe; they knew in the midst of their oppression, their despair, their poverty & pain; they knew that God was with them.

And in this advent season, we are invited to realize the same. Christmas as it is now, is a mere shadow of the real thing, an empty shell, nothing more than a poor imitation.
But Christmas as it really is carries the greatest news ever heard in human history. And not just that God has come, but that Jesus has grown and become a man, that he has offered himself for our sin; that he has been raised from death so that the same power that was at work in him can now be at work in us.

No wonder John Betjamin writes,

And is it true,This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is, no loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies, The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare -That God was man in Palestine And lives today in Bread and Wine.